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Shining Path leader faces another round in court

September 26, 2005|By Items compiled from Tribune news services.

LIMA, PERU — Peru will confront a frightening chapter of its history Monday when it again attempts to try the imprisoned Shining Path leader whose messianic communist vision inspired a 12-year rebellion that left almost 70,000 people dead.

A secret military tribunal sentenced Abimael Guzman to life in prison in 1992, but Peru's top court ruled the trial unconstitutional two years ago. A retrial last year ended in a chaotic mistrial after Guzman and his supporters chanted communist slogans and two of three judges stepped down.

Guzman's lawyer says the 70-year-old former philosophy professor "is aware" that he will receive the same life sentence in the second attempt at a retrial and wants the proceedings to end quickly.

But Marcos Ibazeta, president of the Lima Bar Association and a former anti-terrorism judge, said Guzman's impatience should not be mistaken for that of a man resigned to his fate.

Ibazeta said Guzman knows Peru will never release him, but his goal is to discredit the judicial system for an appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights aimed at freeing hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.